The performance of nurses has become vital in hospitals. Some studies have suggested that nurses’ perceptions of the ethical climate in their hospitals are related to higher job satisfaction and organizational commitment and in turn lessen the issue of nursing shortage.

(1) The ethical climate types "caring," "independent," "law and code," and "rules" have a significant positive impact on overall job satisfaction. (2) The ethical climate types and overall job satisfaction have significant positive influences on normative and affective and significant negative influences on continuance commitment.

The study uses path analysis to understand which types of ethical climate impact overall job satisfaction. It also tries to find the effect of different types of ethical climate and overall job satisfaction on the components of organizational commitment. The relationships between variables were evaluated using factor analysis, reliability, descriptive statistics, correlations, and regression in this study.

A total of 171 useful questionnaires were collected from nurses working in public and private hospitals in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Formal research approval was obtained from the administration of each study hospital. Questionnaires with a cover letter were mailed to the hospitals that agreed to participate in the study. In the cover letter, the researchers explained the study purpose, encouraged nurses’ voluntary participation, and guaranteed the anonymity of participants.

In the first path analyses, "rules" and "caring" climates significantly and positively affected overall job satisfaction. In the second one, while overall job satisfaction and "rules" climate significantly influenced normative commitment, "caring" climate and overall job satisfaction significantly affected affective commitment.

The findings of the study have been convenient with the literature.

Public and private hospitals can enhance overall job satisfaction and organizational commitment by altering the ethical climate of organizations. Hospital administrations should nurture caring and rule types of ethical climate which influence overall satisfaction. By this way, they could reduce nursing shortage.